Yoani Sánchez: “Difficult times are ahead for Cuba”

Acclaimed Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez praised the power of the Internet to protect democracy activists from repression and help transform Cuba. She told supporters in New York:

Technology didn’t just change the life of this little person here with you now. Technology is changing people’s lives.

Sánchez left the island in February and is on an 80-day swing through Europe and the Americas. She traveled this morning to Washington, D.C., where she plans to meet with lawmakers.
“I’m not going to ask for anything,” Sánchez said in New York before reaching the nation’s capital. “Change in Cuba must come from inside Cuba.”
Cuban writer and artist Coco Fusco said Sánchez “spearheads the most significant cultural and political movement to emerge in Cuba in the past decade.”

Supporters of the Cuban government repeatedly accuse Sánchez of somehow being an invention of the U.S. government, an accusation she denies.
Asked what motivates her in the face of such criticism, Sánchez told Along the Malecón in an interview:

I am very stubborn. Ever since I was a little girl I have been stubborn. If I wanted to do something, I followed through to the end.

Gusano, he IS a Cuba expert, but closeted. He has to carry on like he’s Cuban to be Managing Editor at Babalú, but he’s some sort of alien mongrel, like Eastern European mixed with Peruvian (he kinda looks like he’s related to Vargas Llosa in that photo). The Imperial Commission for Ethnic Purity has never cleared him as Cuban, so he’s definitely not certified. Besides, he’s too serious and responsible to be Cuban. You know how they are. I could be a Cuba expert myself, but then I’d have to come out as both Czech and Jewish, which would freak out a lot of people close to me. My real name is Artur Havel-Levine, but I’m working undercover as one of “those people.” As Vaclav used to say, somebody has to make Cubans look tolerably respectable.